The present invention relates to a device for feeding flattened boxes in packaging machines. Such packaging machines may be of the type fed by box feed means, such as machines for the folding and pasting of said boxes.
As is known, boxes in cardboard or other sheet material, intended for the packaging of products in general, are usually preset in a flattened tubular shape and subsequently fed to the packaging machine by means of a feeder device of the type of those described in Italian Patent No. 779631 and Appln. No. 3445A/85 in the name of the same Assignee.
Said feeders substantially comprise a magazine forwardly delimited by an extraction zone. With an appropriate pressure, the boxes arranged in line in the magazine are kept pressed against abutment elements defining said zone, whereat suckers operate to extract the boxes in succession, according to the cycle of the machine, and open them out into a tubular shape interacting with appropriate elements.
The boxes of the magazine are supported by advancement means, in practice constituted by a chain, adapted to keep said boxes pressed against the extraction zone while some are progressively extracted. Said advancement means move longitudinally with respect to the magazine towards the extraction zone, in convenient relation to the corresponding means of the packaging machine.
The boxes to be fed are folded so that their lateral surface and the flaps derived therefrom and intended to define the ends of said box are arranged on one or the other of two mutually adjacent planes.
To pre-dispose the flattened boxes, folding-pasting machines are known, in the field of the manufacture of paper and cardboard articles, of the type for example of those named Studio 60-80 of the Grassi S.a.s. company of Paderno Dugnano (Italy), Diana 125-1 of the Jagenberg-Werke AG of Duesseldorf (Federal Republic of Germany), and Lemanic 650 of the Bobst-Champlain company of Lausanne (Switzerland). In these machines the punched cardboards intended to form the boxes generally undergo a scoring, the pasting of a small longitudinal flap and a series of closing folds; the boxes are then conveyed in a row to the output, and partially superimposed in a sequential manner.
Currently, at the output of the folding-pasting machine the flattened boxes are collected and packed for shipping to the site of use. There the flattened boxes, in a pack, are arranged manually, with a certain frequency, in the feeder of the packaging machine.
It is apparent that the resupply of the packaging machine, besides requiring specific personnel, entails a time interval between the operations of folding and pasting the boxes in flattened shape, performed by the paper-article factory, and the successive operations of filling and closure in the packaging machine. Thus the possibility arises of the occurrence of deformations of the flattened boxes, due to the tensions caused on the cardboard by the setting of the paste, with consequent malfunctions during packaging.